Cornflower

3853 Arbor Dr.

2011-08-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

"If they call these straights," George said while motioning to the pack he tore free of its cellophane, "whattaya think they call those filtered things you smoke?" He screwed an unfiltered cigarette between his smiling lips and continued. "Always be a man, son. No matter how unpopular that is." He lit up. Inhaled. Exhaled. And dropped dead with no more fanfare than a slight twisting of his mouth. A barely perceptible twitch of his eye.

But that was years ago. Now his wife wrapped a well worn and well cared for soft pink cardigan over her well worn and well cared for English rose printed house dress and slowly made her way to her mailbox. It was 1:30 in the afternoon. Frank could set his clock by her. He did, in fact, set his clock by her. In a way. He made sure to always catch her daily trip. He watched from a few houses down. She never seemed to notice him. He soaked her in. Marveled at her regularity at her tidiness. Her small, well worn and well cared for yard. Her well worn and well cared for three bedroom ranch home. In the old days, George took great pride in caring for what he loved. And he loved her just as he loved their house just as he loved their son.

George's mother died two days before his sixteenth birthday. His father went from being distant to cold to putting cigars out on the inside of George's forearms. George came home less and less. He began partaking in petty crimes. One night he was picked up with the contents of a stolen jewelry box stuffed in the pockets of his jacket. He never made it to the pawnshop. The judge sentenced him to ninety days.

Frank's mother died two days before his sixteenth birthday. His father went from being distant to cold to putting cigars out on the inside of George's forearms. George came home less and less. He began partaking in petty crimes. One night he was picked up with the contents of a stolen jewelry box stuffed in the pockets of his jacket. He never made it to the pawnshop. The judge sentenced him to ninety days.

George was released and while walking home, saw a recruiting office. He walked in and less than a month later was being lowered in a life raft into the cold North Pacific Ocean from the already battle-scarred and capsizing Yorktown. He served through the rest of the war and upon coming home became a printer's apprentice. He retired 40 some years later and received a bottle of Scotch, gold-plated watch, and enough pension to keep his wife in a modest and respectable life. Even had a little money put away for his son's schooling.

Frank was released and had a friend pick him up. They got high and talked about some cat named Michael Arlen and how he wrote about Vietnam being the first 'living room war'. The faces on the TV screen were panicked and in pain. Frank had braces put on his teeth and began attending a local community college. His number never came up. He was never drafted. He was relieved to not have to figure out a way into Canada. He never did find a way to contribute to society. His children never knew him. He flitted from person to person and burdened each with himself. Women, relatives, friends. He traveled around the country from one bleeding heart to the next until he was in his forties.

And now Frank looked over at the three bedroom ranch home at 3853 Arbor Dr. At its mailbox out front. He hated it. He loved it. He couldn't understand it. He at one time wanted it but that wish was too far beyond him to entertain for very long. Frank actually lived nearby, down the block, around the corner and down another block and a half. He was living with a saggy peroxide blonde this time. She worked swing shift at a nursing home somewhere. She'd just started getting tired of working fifty hours a week and coming home to Frank on the coach, halfway through a case of piss water beer.

At first he looked for work. Half-heartedly. Now he just told her he was and would walk around the neighborhood instead. He'd leave after lunch and always be near 3853 Arbor Dr. a few minutes before the old lady crept out to her mailbox. He wondered what she received. Letters from friends? Phone bills? Credit card offers? He never got much mail himself. A couple of times he thought about taking it from her box before she retrieved it. Just for curiosity's sake. He couldn't muster the nerve.

You can imagine how the old lady screamed one day, at 1:29 in the afternoon, when she stepped out of her front door and almost tripped over Frank's body. The coroner said he'd opened the veins in his wrists sometime before dawn. Tests showed he'd downed enough piss water beer to choke a horse. Police said that the saggy peroxide blonde woman he had been living with had kicked him out the night before.

The old lady's grandson was on spring break and his dad, her son, dropped him off there for two weeks to care for her. The boy kicked and screamed as much as you'd expect. Dad kicked his ass and told him to be a goddamned man. "This is what men do." He said. Lit a straight, inhaled, exhaled and smiled easily.

The old lady marveled at how much her grandson reminded her of her George as she watched him one morning as he trimmed the hedges out front.

-Kap 2011

A Pig for Freedom

2011-07-29T20:41:00.000-07:00

Marty was always a very thoughtful, helpful pig. He was also very bright and quite well read. So much so, that he quickly became a well sought after thinker. At night the other animals would come to him for advice and assistance. He told the horse how to make clear to the humans that he liked sugar cubes far much more than he liked carrots. Soon the horse was so fat and happy that it sang Marty's praises to no end. Another time, when the rooster complained to Marty about constantly getting splinters from standing on the weather roughened wood of the fence; Marty offered him the solution of perching instead atop a smooth rock. The rooster, too, sang Marty's praises to no end.

Marty also grew into the role of mediating disputes among his fellow farm animals. Once, when two goats argued over who the proper owner of a particular plot of grass was, Marty offered up the solution of having the barn's old mangy dog simply tear it all up, killing it and ending the debate. One of the goats loved the plot of land so much that he couldn't stand the idea of anyone hurting it, so instead offered to let the other goat keep it all. Marty knew then who the rightful owner was. The animals all spoke very highly of that judgement for a very, very, very long time.

One hot July day Marty was lolling around in the mud. He was very sleepy and very, very happy. The night before he'd been kept awake by loud explosions and bright lights. That morning the men who fed the animals spoke much about freedom. Being a very smart pig, Marty knew the sound of a grand idea. Freedom. Right then and there Marty pledged to pursue this freedom. He quickly thought of all the things in the world that might impede one's freedom and pledged to avoid these at all costs. Marty felt if he could simply be as free as possible, he'd be so very, very, very happy.

Marty first noticed that the troubles the other animals came to him with were, at times, interfering with his freedom. What if, he thought, he did not want to help an animal any old time it needed it? Marty pledged right then and there to not help other animals unless he truly wanted to. Soon he barely wanted to help at all. He was so very busy enjoying all the extra time he had to lavish himself in the mud.

But then Marty thought a bit harder. He thought of helping settle disputes and all the time it took from his day. He liked settling disputes, mind you. But what if there was a time he didn't want to, yet the other animals expected it of him? That was by no means freedom. He should have the right to choose. So Marty gathered all the animals together and told them the news. They were quite surprised at it. Soon Marty hardly handled any disputes at all. He was so very busy enjoying all the extra time he had to lavish himself in the mud.

Shortly after all of that, Marty got to thinking again. The slop the men fed him was delicious. But there were times when he ate even if he wasn't hungry. Sometimes Marty wasn't happy unless he was eating the slop. A couple of times, the humans even tried to bribe him into doing silly tricks for the slop. He realized how degrading this was. Marty felt that made him a slave to the slop. Slaves can't know freedom, he reasoned with a trained logic and a keen mind. And pledged to only eat the slop when he was very hungry, and also only just enough so that he was satisfied. Maybe even a little less than satisfied. Marty soon ate less and less. Because he'd reasoned that "satisfied" was one of those words that can enslave its user. As such, it must be handled with great care. A benefit of all this was that since Marty spent so much less time eating, he had all the more time to lavish himself in the mud.

The leaves began to change color then. The humans wore flannel shirts in the mornings. Marty had went from being a very thoughtful, helpful pig, to a pig who spent all his time by himself and focused only on his own freedom. Refusing to do what he didn't feel like doing, even refusing to do what he liked to do. All this in the name of being ever vigilant against his own enslavement. The mud had a nice chill to it. He couldn't imagine spending a day without its embrace. He then saw he was nothing more than a slave to this mud.

When the humans had begun to layer their flannel in the growing colder mornings, they showed concern for poor Marty. He'd stopped growing and had an increasingly unhealthy color to his skin. He did not interact with the other animals, instead stood still all day in the sty's corner, looking almost too scared to move.

Marty noticed he could see his fogged breath on the morning he heard the beeping of the backing up truck come to take him to market. He knew what it was, since he was still a very bright and quite well read pig. And he was quite happy it had at long last come.

-Kap 2011

The Wheels on the Bus

2011-07-01T22:32:00.000-07:00

Ted needed all the courage he could muster. His two sons, one a toddler the other an infant, wailed in the other room. He felt an unreasonable yet powerful desire to open the refrigerator door and look around, knowing full well it was empty. As empty as the pantry, which mercifully had stopped calling him earlier that morning.

Ted finally decided he'd put his foot down. Tell Amy, his wife and the mother of his sons, that she was to stop working at the strip club. Tell her the shame and degradation involved in what she was doing was far greater than that of government assistance. He'll talk to her that night. Tomorrow afternoon he'll apply for food stamps. Tomorrow morning she'll tell him that she's going off to dance just one last night.

Amy never planned on coming home, though. Not even as her lips let escape her words. In a week she'll have a tattoo scripted in lovely spirals traveling the length of her entire left arm from shoulder to wrist which reads: It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are." Amy had no idea who ee cummings was but someone had once told her he or she had said that. She found the quote to be frequently on her mind. Amy will soon prostitute herself. Every day she'll feel freer and more liberated than the last. One day, a john will gut her. Rip her from pussy to collarbones with a rusted linoleum knife.

Deborah, the caseworker Ted sat across the desk from at the Department of Human Services was a middle aged woman who would have been someone's granny had her father not molested her from cradle til sixteen years of age, when she left his home. He was at work that day, or the bar. Her mother cried when Deborah told her that her bags were packed. The tears were not for Deborah, though, but for herself.

The years of molestation left Deborah unable to have children. Both physically and mentally. She became, instead, a social worker. A fighter against all injustices. A protector. She was hardly ever home in her small and tidy one bedroom apartment. Either she was at work or volunteering at any number of places. Her fat orange tabby was bored quite often as he watched the TV Deborah left playing for him. Sometimes he'd lap at his water bowl and appear to thoughtfully contemplate the ripples. One day, years later, he'll do just that while Deborah lies dead across the threshold of her bedroom.

On the bus ride home, Ted was able to lick his ego's wounds with the fact that his sons would eat that night and every meal after. He won't be on assistance long. Soon one of his many resumes will be answered with a job drilling hinges onto doors for $12.25 an hour. He'd be surprised, he thought on the bus, if he ever saw his Amy again. Ted admonished his own naivete for ever calling Amy 'his'. His sons began to roughhouse so, smiling broadly, he moved to sit in between them. His grandsons will remind him so much of his sons. Even through the dementia...at first, anyway. Leslie, his second wife, will place flowers at his grave every Friday. With every Friday's paycheck, he'll never come home without a bouquet for her.

The bus driver's name was Carl. Carl was a small birdlike man with busy feet and hands. He shook his non-pedal foot out of rhythm to a hymn he remembered his drunk father singing at church. He tapped at the wheel with bony fingers and worn smooth wedding ring. Carl liked running an occasional hand through his hair. It was finally getting long enough to slick back. His hand smelled constantly of a cheap hair tonic. He glanced proudly at himself in the rear view mirror. As proud as he was, he was still unnerved about the billions upon billions of germs which grew atop his scalp ever since he found the courage to stop shaving his head. He found himself worrying about all that less and less every day. Soon he'll have a full beard and leave his wife. It won't work out, though. Carl will die an alcoholic death in some back alley. Muttering his wife's name.

-Kap 2011

sharp shooter

2011-06-27T20:26:00.000-07:00

it was late
or maybe it was early

i was awake watching her sleep.
it's amazing, the distance
a king-sized memory foam bed
can afford between two people

of all the types of loneliness
shared loneliness is the worst.

it's important
in those times especially
to love yourself

in every meaning of the word.

suddenly
there was a rustle.

a bang

without thought
i reached for my imaginary holster
pointed my forefinger toward the trouble
pulled my thumb trigger

ready to ask questions later
"bang" i said softly.

our cat scampered from its spot
to down the stairs. a close one, i thought

blew smoke from the barrel of my peacemaker
twirled it skillfully but not too showy
smoothly replaced it in its holster

i wondered if steel blue gunfighter eyes
saw the world any differently.

thought of reaching for a l'amour paperback
giggled instead.
knee deep in loving my own quirkiness.

sleepily, angrily, tiredly
bec grunted "you're incessant!"

"hell, i'd never fuck no kin o' mine!" i blurted out.

in a dark room we held our breaths
at last and together we let loose our laughter.

our tension lifted, gone
i suddenly found myself being the horse
in my rugged western tale

of a cowgirl and how she broke herself a stallion.

-Kap 2011

Ms. Betty

2011-06-21T21:45:00.000-07:00

she smelled of

cocoa butter, ghetto hopelessness and the

free school lunches of decades past.

when she fell on hard youthful times

she prostituted but no more.

the princess tattoo atop her left tit

sagged then sagged some more.

even the gold in her teeth

refused to shine

she vaguely remembered

wanting more for herself

and the bitter frustration that brought.

she believed her fat pussy frowned harder

than her cracked face ever could

after pushing out 6 gang members

(4 dead now).

so no more tricks came her way

and she didn't go looking.

about twenty years ago now

the supermarket opened-

hired from her projects

she got lucky passed a 3rd grade math test

that most other applicants couldn't

became a cashier.

and a familiar face to house wives, children

and unemployed food stamp working hours shoppers.

she was Ms. Betty to everyone

watched many babies grow. some die in blood.

ready always with her dull gold smile

of undeniable warmth.

the arthritis was setting in good now

they moved her from her express lane home

put her on checkout #14

some customers thought she had died

no one ever looked all the way down to #14.

the express lane is a self checkout now

no sagging tattooed tits

no once golden smile

no sad pussy, tired from the birthing of too many thugs.

the burying of too many cocks. long time passed

just beeps and whirls

and while the customers were sad

they soon were pleased by the new efficiency.

And Ms. Betty watched this all

alone and unseen on empty #14.

she had heard more self checkouts were coming.

management stopped hiring new cashiers

at the end of one 9 hour shift

after 9 hours at #14 all alone

she angrily desperately kicked a self check out machine

and on the way home to her studio apartment

her toe hurt so bad she stopped 3 times to sit on the curb

feet in the gutter worn shoes torn socks

2 days later she went to the free clinic

her big toe and the next one were broken.

the upwardly mobile 30 something doctor

told her to miss work for 2 weeks while she healed.

she hobbled home to her meowing cat

played the message on her machine

it said in a managerial tone that

more self checkouts were coming in a week

Ms. Betty hung her head and cried

as her cat licked at its empty saucer

as outside her lone window

the sun beat down on the dirty cement

withering a brave dandelion

dying between it's cracked surface.

wishing that just one passerby

would recall its proud yellow bloom.

Kap 2010
This appeared in the Moronic Ox Literary Journal, of which I now have nothing good to say about as a whole.

Madam Annick Ahmar

2011-06-21T21:29:00.000-07:00

She gathered all her strength in order to sit up. She looked again at the email she painstakingly wrote in a language not her native tongue. The broth had grown cold. With a quivering hand, she lifted it to her dry lips. She choked at the slightest sip. With a weary arm, lowered the bowl back into place. Outside her window a tree swayed. She wondered at its age. At the minute amount of time humans are granted in comparison.

But she mustn't let her mind wander now. Time was too precious. The email. She must express herself as properly as possible. She gathered strength; maybe her final strength. For who knows when the well runs dry?

"Concentrate, devushka." She tells herself in a low and unfamiliar wheeze. Strength to read the email one last time comes to her in the thought of all the good her money might do. All the lives she can touch through it.

Dear Beloved,

I am Mrs.Annick Ahmar and i have been suffering from ovarian cancer disease and the doctor says that i have just two days to leave. i am from (eastern Province) Russian but base inAfrica Burkina Faso since eight years ago as a business woman dealing with gold exportation.

Now that i am about to end the race like this, without any family members and no child. i have $3Million US Dollars in Africa Development Bank (ADB) Burkina Faso which i instructed the bank to give it to St Andrews Missionary Home in Burkina Faso .

But my mind is not at rest because i am writing this letter now through the help of my computer beside my sick bed. i also have $4.5Million US Dollars at Ecobank here in Burkina Faso and i instructed the bank to transfer the money to the foreigner that will apply to the bank after i have gone that they should release the fund to you, but you will assure me that you will take 50% of the money and give 50% to the motherlessbabyhomes, charity homes. In your country for my heart to rest. YOU ARE TO CONTACT THE BANK THROUGH THIS EMAIL ADDRESS ecob.ankbf@blumail.org

Yours fairly friend
Thanks from
Madam Annick Ahmar.

She again contemplates the broth. Knows it is futile. With a blue finger nailed hand clicks send. And says a silent prayer that cynicism's chilling hold on humanity is not yet complete.

A Love Story

2011-06-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

Sam was paralyzed from the waist down. The accident occurred years ago and he had long come to something resembling peace. He'd had a fine run of it. Prior to the accident he played some ball in the Pacific Coast League. A whisper from the majors. He was called up for a cup of tea a handful of Septembers but never caught on. Which was fine with him. He couldn't bring himself to complain about the sheer luck of being able to play a game he so loved.

Sam was a simple man with simple tastes. The settlement he received made certain he would never have to worry about money. He began spending a tremendous amount of time viewing sports. Athletes, really. Mostly on his modest and static filled television. It was easier than going out. He'd watch their bodies, primed to physical perfection. It was a thrill to see the human body work at the heights of its talents. Basketball season with the long lean frames almost like Thoroughbred horses. Boxing with its combatants of top physical conditioning and bravery. Baseball was a bit tougher to watch for obvious reasons but the tremendously heightened skills of the players thrilled him, as long as he put aside from himself the fact that he was once one of them.

Football season, with its heavy padding and slower movements, less obvious skills, was far less mesmerizing of a sport. The loud colors and over the top spectacle always seemed like more of a garish parade to him. It was then, during football season, that the agency had replaced his elderly black woman caregiver with a new girl. Kate was a thick blonde, not bad looking and constantly wearing a not so subtle hint of sex on her person. Her tits always poked out of the top of her nursing scrubs, entering his small apartment seemingly long before the rest of her. Their flesh danced hypnotically when she giggled, which was often. She had wide set hips and a delightful soft ass. He grabbed at it once, a month into her visits. She pretended not to notice. He held the flesh in his hand for a very long time. Held onto it far longer in his mind.

Sam was unsure how it actually came to this. As now he watched Kate lay atop his unmade bed still sweating and naked. The two boys he had hired for her having left just minutes ago. She seemed to be drifting off to sleep. The smell of cum hung in the air. It was wonderful to watch her. To watch someone so good with their body. Her pussy opened so wet and readily, men seemed almost in danger of being swallowed whole. She seemed to worship cocks with her mouth, with her hands. She put to shame the ballplayers, the fighters. This, the sex she performed so exquisitely well, was so much more human. So much more divine.

It was expensive, this new passion. A radio played strains of fuzzy yet audible Chicago blues with its heavy, rolling bass. The television was long gone. As was every other luxury and some borderline necessities. But it was well worth it. He rolled himself over to her on the bed. She was asleep. The sweat had dissipated, their cum was still on her face, drying. Slowly spilling from her gorgeous cunt as she breathed it in and out of her with each rise and fall of her heavy, pale breasts.

He closed his eyes and imagined himself able to place his head on her soft belly. Kate's stretch marks always felt so lovely on Sam's cheeks.

-Kap 2011

Dark As Hell

2011-06-13T23:53:00.000-07:00

Nick had been walking all day. It's what one does when one has nowhere to be. He found himself at a suburban mall. First in its bathroom for a freshening up. A peeling off of his worn thin and through shoes and blood soaked soaks. A couple splashes of water to his scraggly face. He yearned for a shave. Only complete and utter destitute can make life's necessities take on such an aura of luxury.

Then he counted his coins at the food court where bright promises of homemade meals were made by humans who looked like machines standing in front of things which looked nothing like home. He opted for a flavorless burger. Tried making small talk to the soulless uniform who took his warm change. Nothing. Retreated back toward a tree which seemed to weep as it stretched toward a too small piece of sky covered by a too thick pane of glass. He unwrapped his lunch. Or was it dinner. Perhaps breakfast.

Children played atop a padded floor on colorful and nonsensical toys. They seemed to particularly like a huge lady bug which they crawled in and out of. Climbed up and down on. They seemed to shy away from a brightly lit, small enclosed structure that was lined with mirrors. Some warped reflections, some did not. He didn't notice a single child enter that.

A mother sat on the other end of the bench from Nick in a hurried motion which signaled great importance. Called her child over. Both were light-skinned blacks. The child glistened and vibrated as excited children at play often do. The mother dabbed at her daughter's beaded sweat.

"Now you don't play with that one dark girl." The mother said in a forceful whisper through clenched teeth. "That nigger dark as hell and you just know that mean she up to no good."

Her daughter nodded. Went back to playing. In what seemed like well practiced intent, she began to play with a redheaded, freckled boy. The dark as hell girl seemed very confused to be rejected by her playmate of five minutes ago.

Nick tossed the wrapper into a trashcan. Wiped his mouth with a frayed sleeve. The light-skinned mother offered him a very gracious and broad smile. He felt a strong impulse to leave that place. He looked forward to sleeping on a park bench and under the stars that night. The sounds and sensations of the chilled night's breeze lightly playing all around him.

-Kap 2011

Four Fat Women

2011-06-12T20:46:00.000-07:00

George listened to their chatter as he picked a stray piece of tobacco from his front teeth. As he contemplated the swirling blue-grey smoke roll free of his cigarette. As the sideways falling rain threatened to find them all even under the canopy.

"Like anyone will call it that." Declared the fattest.
"Every town needs a Martin Luther King Avenue." Said another sarcastically.
"I'm still gonna call it Rosemont." Decided the third.
"Wanna go in?" One asked the fattest.
"I think so."
"So early?" Asked the other of the fattest.
"It's one o'clock already!" Replied the fattest, opening the tavern door, letting smoke and bass heavy music escape into the air. She laughed at the other two. Or perhaps the absurdity of it all. Her red and white horizontal striped shirt rippled as she laughed. It played strangely in George's eyes. One of the others winked at him as she entered and was swallowed by the midday darkness of the establishment. The door closed behind them.

George turned his attention to the last few drags of his smoke. As he did, two men, a black and a Mexican appeared before him. The black asked if he could bum a cigarette. George told him he hadn't any left. The black looked down into his chest pocket and saw an almost full pack. Their eyes locked for a second. The Mexican mumbled something and a car passed by which he and the black recognized. It pulled up and they left George to speak to its driver.

George walked back into the pool hall. It was right next to the bar but while the bar seemed full, the pool hall was nearly empty. He wasn't one for pool. Wasn't one to frequent its halls. He had no idea what possessed him to walk in two hours before. He re-positioned himself back on a tall chair, lit another smoke and rested his arm on the tall table over the ashtray, his back against the wall.

George liked to play out scenarios in his mind. He imagined the black and the Mexican coming in to finish their chat. He figured the black would be mad. He looked at their legs while he was outside with them. The Mexican had the absolute skinniest legs he'd ever seen. They were stuffed into fatly cushioned bright white sneakers. The overstuffed sneakers made his legs look even skinnier. The black wore over-sized basketball shorts. They were so large on his frame that they looked almost like a skirt. Under them he wore spandex tights. Some type of athletic wear, George was sure, but they looked like tights to him. On the black's feet were flip-flops. George wondered what the hell the world had come to.

If they were to approach him again, thought George, he'd handle it smoothly. He put himself in the moment. The Mexican with the skinny legs always seemed to be on his heels. The black never seemed to keep his weight balanced, always shifted it lazily to one side or another. George decided that he'd speak softly to them. Then abruptly knock his ashtray to the tiled floor. As the motion and then the sound distracted them, he'd hit the black first. On the jaw. He didn't look like the type with much of a chin. Then he'd take out the Mexican with the skinny legs who was always laid back on his heels. He'd have time for a hook to the liver and a cross to the head. He'd then turn his attention back to the black. A couple of shots to the gut would finish him nicely.

But they didn't follow George in. So after a few minutes he sat and contemplated the scar tissue on his knuckles. Then a couple walked into the pool hall. He wore a striped, polo shirt and cargo shorts. He was in his thirties, like George, but looked like a boy. His baseball hat's brim was slightly askew to the left. Or maybe to the right. He had a lazy and meaningless posture. She was fat and wore a thinner woman's clothes. A teal tube top filled with fat rolls and white linen pants which her pink underwear showed through.

George had been with women like her before. Newly fat and angry. Or perhaps they were always angry. The last one he left three thousand miles away. Every man they worked with wanted her. And she chose George. Big tits, big ass, and a small enough waist. Always ready for a laugh. For a cock. The other men hated George in their envy.

But George was a man who liked to play out scenarios in his mind. He saw his misery just around the corner. It was almost as if he'd skipped to the final chapter of a book and saw its main character die horribly. He would have a hard time enjoying that character's better times, knowing what loomed ahead. So even when she slobbered all over his cock. All over his balls. Gave him her pussy and her ass. Let him hold her while she told him how he was all she ever wanted in a man. Laughed at all his little jokes. Even during this, the knowledge of that final chapter loomed.

And it all played out as expected. Him three thousand miles away in a pool hall. Possibly forever wounded. Her back there. The couple looked at the jukebox and decided on her song. Three times. Not once on his. The seams stretched on her clothes as she bent over to see the songs listed. He eventually backed off and surveyed the pool table. Lined up a shot and missed. She laughed. George knew the time when a newly fat woman's laughed turned from music to barbs. From dancing freely in the air to viciously attacking a man. This man looked surprised. George smiled almost wickedly. Amused to have caught such a moment in time. She let the man take another shot. He missed. And missed again. And again. Her laughs became painful to hear. His pain and confusion became palpable.

The black and the Mexican walked in then. The waitress had just taken George's ashtray back into the kitchen to empty it. He suddenly didn't feel much fight in himself. The pool cue didn't hurt, really, when it crashed into the side of his head. He was surprised to find himself on the cold floor though. Fat white sneakers kicked at him, attached to the skinniest legs he ever saw. They didn't hurt either. Not a lot anyway.

As George looked over toward the door he saw the black there holding the broken half of a pool cue, lighting a cigarette. Silhouetted by the sun coming in. Before his eyes closed he found his mind drifting to Martin Luther King. Wondering exactly how many avenues bore the name.

-Kap 2011

retreat to the outside sun

2011-06-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

she pulls her panties
up over her spank reddened
thighs
and
ass

slowly
and
quivering.

as i admire
my handiwork

her movements remind me
of my mother
so carefully
opening a present
as to reuse
the paper.

and

i retreat
to the outside sun

with a cigar
in my yellowed teeth

and still
somewhat

of a hard on
in my yellowed underwear.

Kap 2008

This one's included in my first collection of poetry, West of West. Ask me how you can take a copy off my hands.

Emily

2011-06-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

She gathered herself or tried to, left alone in the cheap and ruffled motel bed.

"I'd have fucked you even if you hadn't given me that pizza." She said, nodding her head as if she were really believing it.
"I know, baby." He buckled his belt with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
"Fighters shouldn't smoke." She said.
"Most fighters shouldn't fight." He countered. And then saw her face. Her sadness. "You still hungry?"
"No."

The room was like every other motel room he'd ever been in. A bed, chair, dresser, TV, and nightstand. He always tried hard to not pay the bible in the drawer any mind. He didn't know why, but it always seemed to make matters worse. Or perhaps he only read it when matters were, in fact, worse. He lit another smoke with the butt of the last. Opened the door and stood there looking out through the weeds and chain link fence onto the highway.

"I'd have fucked you anyway." She repeated.
"You're okay, baby."

He turned toward her again. Took a twenty from his wallet and handed it to her. She took it in a sad and empty motion.

"You know where I am if you need me?" He asked
"Yes."

And with that he left. She cleaned herself with a stiff, cheap towel. Bleached white but still seemingly dirty. Made her way to the bathroom, opened its door.

"Emily? Have you fallen asleep?" Her voice was singsong and cracked with breaks in her bravery. "Would you like to watch cartoons on the TV?" They walked toward there hand in hand. Emily sat on the floor with the remote, her back leaned up against the foot of the bed.

"I'm hungry, mommy." Her eyes lit up when showed the greasy pie growing cold in a nondescript box. A happy man tossing dough printed on its lid. She tried to imagine being that happy. She decided it wasn't possible.

The cold cheese was hard to swallow. The more she chewed, the more it grew in her mouth. She looked at her mother out of the corner of her eyes. She decided her mother had never been as happy as the man on the box either. She wondered why anyone would draw such a terrible picture.

* * * * * * * *

He stepped into the gym. The usual smells and sounds greeted him. Jack waited for him by his locker. "Hey, Jack." He said. "What's the word?"
"Third." Came Jack's answer.
"I'll lay down, Jack. But for Chrissakes. I'll do it in the eighth."
"They said the third."
"I put down my last three hundred on the eighth."
"You know how these things work," Jack said. "You ain't been green in a million years."

He knew it had been at least a million years. He looked down. His gloves and old army duffel bag were laying there on the cold, cracked tiles. "Why's my shit not in my locker, Jack?"
"You're behind on your fees."
"I'll get it to you tomorrow."

Jack took him at his word and allowed him to put his stuff back up in his locker after his workout. It was another lazy go. His punches never snapped, he moved like a slug, and his legs kept spreading further apart on their own. They were leaving him. The Mexican who held his spit bucket had a look of pity in his eyes.

He wondered if he had three rounds left in himself. He wondered how to ask her for his twenty bucks back.

Tales From Dank Ct. Vol. 5

2011-06-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

I named him Apollo. I suppose I always felt a connection to the classics. He was one of two kittens we found, Nicole and I. We were barely teenagers. Maybe we weren't quite yet. She was gorgeous. Puerto Rican and Jewish. She lived with her two moms in apartment 1A, right by the stairs. I'd pass her door and think of her as I bounded up the stairs or to the outside.

Apollo was silver grey with a streak of white on his chest. He was weak and small. Snot ran out of both nostrils constantly. The other one, the healthier one that I made sure Nicole kept, became Pandora. She looked just like Apollo but robust with clear green piercing eyes.

The third night Apollo stayed in our apartment my dad yelled for being kept awake by his meowing. It was a Sunday night and Monday mornings always loomed horribly large on my father. To keep Apollo quiet, I fell asleep cuddling him. I wondered if Nicole cuddled Pandora. I tried to feel like a cat and failed. And fell asleep.

I dreamed of Nicole and her softness. Her frail features, wispy limbs. I dreamed of touching her hair. It was so thin and soft that it melted away under my heavy, sweaty fingers. Years later she'd become a model, a dope fiend, and a suicide.

I later thought that her hair didn't melt but evaporate. Disappear. As if what kept her real was somewhat less than what kept the rest of us real. Others erased her before she took the last swipe. A handful of pills, I believe. I never cared to know the details.

When I awoke that morning, my dad had already left for work. Only his heavy energy remained. The kitchen smelled of eggs and toast. My mom listened to Brooklyn's best country music station. I stretched and rose. Only then thinking of Apollo. I looked down to the sofa's autumn colored river scene. A mill with its wheel. A copse of trees. And a crushed kitten. I lifted Apollo's limp shell and tried to revive him. He was gone. My mom came running in when she heard my screams.

We buried him behind a row of bushes outside our apartment house. Nicole cried when I told her, for me more than for Apollo. Or at least I'd like to think. She was sad that I cared for my kitten so much and was left with nothing. I'd wipe its nose and eyes, carry it when it couldn't walk. Even tried to bottle feed it. Meanwhile she couldn't care for Pandora, who had put on a few pounds and inches in only a few days. Her moms cared well for her. Nicole never even fed her. I don't remember seeing her so much as pet it. I couldn't understand why this was.

It was the first time I saw her fade before my eyes. And I realized that as long as I had known her, she had been.

I suppose Nicole told other people about Apollo being buried behind that row of bushes. Still upset, I passed by the spot on my way to a field we sometimes played football in. A couple of kids were digging up his body. I don't recall hitting them. Later, Nicole told me I had. I do recall stiff fur. Bulging eyes. I tried to close his mouth but couldn't. I placed him back in the shoe box. My mother's matronly Soft Spots, she had bad feet and those comforted her. I recall my hands pushing dirt back over it. I recall numbness.

As I write this, I recall shoveling the first load of dirt onto my father's coffin. The sound of it when it hit wood.

Nicole continued her evaporation. By the time I had turned seventeen and left Brooklyn, her story was all but over. It just took another handful of years. I wondered if she had finally become invisible the instant before she fell asleep for the last time.

One of her mothers contacted me a few years after. She wanted to tell me that Pandora had died. She had been sick for months. In her final weeks she had taken to sleeping on their coffee table, atop the family bible.

Tales From Dank Ct. Vol. 4

2011-06-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

The new kid’s a nigger.

That was the big news floating around our apartment complex. My friends and I were about fifteen years old. All of our lives had been lived in an old Italian stronghold of a Brooklyn neighborhood. Russian Jews were accepted, most likely because they had business with the Italians. But never the niggers or spicks that constantly threatened our borders.

We’d all heard the stories from our parents; saw the proof with our own two eyes. One quiet working class neighborhood after another was turned almost over night into a row of roach infested crack houses. It began with one welfare family sneaking in on Section 8. Before you knew it, you looked around and it was “Gorillas in the Mist” as our neighborhood beat cops would say (when they were around, which was none too often).

And this new kid’s a nigger. And there’s never just one. There’s most likely a slew of little niglettes. A mother/grandmother, too. This new kid, this nigger, his family—they couldn’t be allowed to gain a foothold. The talk of our entire apartment complex and neighborhood reached deafening proportions.

I met the nigger’s little brother first. He must have been ten or so. He rode his bicycle out toward us and as he grew closer, my friend’s parents began to call in their children. I stopped my bike and waited to hear my mom’s voice. I didn’t. He peddled closer and closer at an unsure of his riding capability speed. Or maybe he was afraid. Back then I assumed he was just a new rider. From around the side of the building, coming in a dead run, was the nigger we’d heard so much about. He had a scared look on his face as he ran frantically to catch up with his little brother. He obviously was aware that he had stumbled into a potentially dangerous situation.

The little one was healthy and well built. Like a frolicking Labrador Retriever pup. The older one was about my size, maybe a bit more slender. We locked eyes.

“My name’s Craig.” He said as he extended a nervous hand. I shook it firm and was surprised to feel a hand nearly as solid as my own. We began to talk. About what, I can’t recall. But we agreed to meet up in a few days to walk down to Avenue X and watch the Fourth of July firework display. He’d noted how he wanted to go, but was afraid. I told him not to worry.

My reputation was already fairly secure. It started when I was not quite ten. The whole school was forced to attend an assembly in the auditorium. I believe it was a “Just Say No” talk. I went to sit in the only available seat I could find, between two Italian kids. One put his hand out to prevent me from sitting.

“It’s okay,” Said the somewhat familiar one. “He’s one of the good Jews.”

I couldn’t say then, why this angered me so, but I leaned over him and threw a right cross that busted open his lip and broke a tooth. His friend began to stand and then slunk down into his chair as if I’d already hit him when I turned my attention toward him. I left the auditorium and was suspended for two days. Not for hitting the kid, but for missing the assembly.

The kid I hit, Michael Zanleone grew up being one of the tougher “Mini Mafioso” in our neighborhood and always maintained a healthy fear of me. I would openly tease him in front of his pals about him having to leave school a half hour early for the rest of that semester in order to protect him from me. The principal asked if I would promise to not hit him again. I wouldn’t.

So even a nigger was safe with me. But Craig didn’t know that. I met him outside of his fourth floor apartment on Independence Day. His mom was a bundle of nerves. Hard to understand, Jamaican accented nerves. On our way to Avenue X, Craig told me what brought him to the neighborhood.

He, his little brother and his mom had lived in another area of Brooklyn, a Black area. In the projects. All was okay there until his mom decided to attend college, then it quickly became unlivable. The other Blacks, once her friends, turned on her immediately. She was selling out, ashamed to be Black, an Uncle Tom. A neighbor once tried to stab her. They hid in their apartment for almost two years, leaving only when they absolutely needed to and never for too long. Then she graduated as a nurse, got a job at Coney Island Hospital and moved to our building. A much nicer apartment to be holed up in.

To this day, I still miss Avenue X fireworks. The street was closed and a bonfire was built in the middle of it. Boxes and boxes of fireworks and M-80s were thrown in. Craig and I received some dirty looks, but nothing more. We walked home, unable to keep straight strides. Our ears were ringing and our balance off.

The next day Craig played stickball with my friends and I. He quickly became accepted. He was the only one who could tackle me, so he always earned a spot on the other team when we chose up football sides in order to shred ourselves in the street.

We calmed his nerves when three Black guys were beaten to death by a group of Whites right outside our corner drugstore. The site wasn’t cleaned up too well, Craig and I walked past the next day and saw blood splatters and baseball bat splinters. I stole him a pack of smokes to help calm his nerves.

Soon summer was ending. Night was falling. It was too dark to play stickball any longer and the game broke up. Craig and I sat alone on the stoop, under a lamp post. For the first time, he thanked me. Thanked me for treating him like a person, not a Black person. I said nothing.

Then the lamp post fizzled and went out. I looked around and all the apartment lights were out too. It was a brown out. I looked toward Craig and couldn’t see him. I laughed. Said in a loud, searching, mock worried voice, “Either smile or show me your palms, man. Because I can’t fuckin' see you for shit!!!”

And I took off running. I heard him running behind me. Chasing me. I couldn’t stop laughing. Neither could he. We ran around the block maybe three times, after a bit, we gave up the pretense of the chase.

Running side by side through blind city streets, leaping and laughing.

Tales From Dank Ct. Vol. 3

2011-06-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

I was 9 years old. It was a bright, sunny summer's day. The kind of day baseball was meant to be played on. My dad was helping me break in a new mitt. The night before he had oiled up the leather, put a hardball in its pocket and tied twine tightly around it before placing it under his mattress to set in. We were going to take it out when he got home that evening and throw the ball around a bit. But it was gorgeous out and I couldn't wait. I sneaked into my parent's room and lifted the mattress at its corner to retrieve my glove. I simply couldn't resist flashing my new leather in my friends' faces. My old glove was so, well, old.

And then I saw it. Not my glove, that must have been on the other end of the bed. What I saw was a Juggs magazine. I took a long peek around. Mom was momming, and doing so way on the other side of the apartment, I reckoned. I slowly and with no shortness of awe and respect lifted the glossy magazine. At first I just held it, looking at its cover and then I breathed deeply and opened it. It opened to an article which I can't recall the contents of, but in the lower corner of a page was a picture of a huge set of naked titties with a large plate sitting on them, holding a cheeseburger and fries. No face, no belly, just big tits, burger, fries and huge nipples. When I close my eyes, I can still see them.

********

It was six years or so later. I was experiencing my first girlfriend scenario and all it entailed. We'd go alongside my apartment building where bushes hid us and we'd make out until chapped lips or an impromptu baseball game made us stop. All our friends would make fun of us when we sat around on the stoop. We were the first two to pair off and explore. When my dad's drunk friend pierced my ear with a sewing needle, he put into the hole the crucifix earing she gave me right out of her ear, we were that serious.

Soon she wanted me to give her a promise ring. I wasn't sure what to do, so I asked my dad about it. He asked me what we were doing. I said making out. He asked me if I wanted to do more and if she stopped me when I tried. I told him that so far, I was able to do whatever I wanted, which was just kissing. He told me that there was no sense in buying her a ring if everything was going so well. I could not, and still cannot, argue that sage advice.

But I did decide that I wanted to try to do more, to go a little further. I had set my sights to second base. She had already shown interest in sitting on my lap and cuddling when we all hung out on the stoop. Sometimes I let her. Usually I was too concerned that her dad would drive by. He was always driving by. Waving to her. Staring at me. He had a Mercury Cougar, the type with the tear-drop shaped window by the backseat. He always wore a wifebeater and I could make out his tattoos as he cruised by. I could also make out his rounded shoulders and biceps. Once he got out of the Cougar to call over my love interest/his daughter for a hug. He seemed to be in the process of standing for quite some time until he completely unfurled into what looked, at the time, about eight feet tall. (If I had to guess now, I'd say about 6'5 or so). Just a huge guy with greased back black hair. When she hugged him, he smiled. When he smiled, he looked even meaner.

What my love and I obviously needed was privacy. I unhooked the roof key to my apartment building from my mom's keychain while she was once again off momming. A couple of years ago, the super of my building locked the door to our roof because he was tired of cleaning up after my friends and I. All that did was make me quite popular due to my knack for key-getting. A couple of years later, my key-getting skills would lead me to almost getting killed, but that's for another time.

We were making out along the side of my building again, behind the bushes. I stopped and showed her my roof key and asked her if she wanted to hang out up there. As we rode up in the elevator, I wasn't nervous at all. Just sort of resigned to her blocking my attempt at second base. I was actually quite sure that she wasn't at all interested in my grubby little hands feeling her up. But I was on a mission. Worst case scenario, I thought, I'd buy her a promise ring and try again...

Things got pretty hot and pretty heavy and did so pretty quickly up on that rooftop. At just the second my lips began to chap, I untucked her shirt. And I waited for her to stop me. She didn't. I slid my hand up her belly waiting for her to stop me. She didn't. I was amazed that she was letting me do this and I thought of those titties under my dad's mattress, with their plate of cheeseburger and fries resting on them. And I felt them. Only these were very much smaller than those. My hand engulfed her tit and I waited, thinking that perhaps she hadn't yet noticed and was still going to reject me. I didn't know what to do. I had no game plan for success. I was sure she'd reject me, so I harbored no idea as to what I'd do in the odd case that she didn't. My kissing grew distracted, I became disoriented. The whole universe was alive in my hand. Nothing else existed, the universe then began to poke me in the palm of my hand in the form of a hardening nipple. I froze. My hand, especially, never did move. I was in shock and could only feel her nipple poking my palm harder and harder. We unclenched and nothing was said. I trembled through my pocket for a cigarette and lit it, trying to regain my cool. I offered her a drag and she declined.

The sun was setting over Coney Island and I realized then that I had a huge hard on. I wondered if she ever thought of fondling me. I wondered who else might want to fondle me. Baseball suddenly became far less of a serious endeavor.

Tales From Dank Ct. Vol. 2

2011-06-04T13:40:00.000-07:00

When I was in my late elementary school and early Junior High years, I'd often cut class to go study at the library. In sixth grade my principal called me into his office to threaten me with suspension if I didn't rectify my attendance. I looked at him amazed and either thought or said aloud I'm not showing up for class, and as punishment I'm being threatened with not having to show up at class? I was 12, but the world was already proving itself to be full of shit. I could never look him in his eyes, Mr. Breyer, he had a terrible comb over that would flap in the wind on breezy Brooklyn days. Especially when my friends and I hid his cover up fishing hat.

Dad picked up some extra hours at the Transit Authority to pay for my private schooling after the suspension lead to expulsion. I liked the private school a lot. It had a pay phone by one of its exits where I could call for a cab whenever I felt like going to the library. I used to play quarters all the time and always had some money in my pocket. (Maybe I should start playing quarters again.) I also had a teacher who spoke of living in Arizona, how the heat bubbled the paint on his car. It all seemed so exotic. Soon I was asked to leave due to my issues with attendance.

I'm not sure as to my fascination with libraries. I suppose they speak to the natural autodidact in me. They were also a lot safer than public and even private schools in Coney Island. I recall getting new sterile plastic picnic style tables for our elementary school cafeteria. Our Assistant Principal told us to get used to them because they were the type of tables used at Rikers Island.

About the only other thing I remember regarding school during those years is the fighting. Hearing "Meet me in the school yard at 3 o'clock." was always music to my ears. I fought so much that Dad brought me to a seedy Boxing Gym. He thought it would give me a safer outlet for my aggression. It did. And made the school fights go easier, as well.

And in the evening, my buds and I would prowl Ave. X, acting like mini Mafioso (some perfected this enough as to become true Mafia soldiers). We'd swing by Melody Haven, steal some cigarettes and a couple of Spalding balls to toss around. Shoot quarters and play handball up against the corner drugstore or bakery. Hoping the older guys would come around for us to try to impress. Sometimes we'd steal Starter jackets from other kids and give them to the older guys to sell. They'd give us a couple of bucks and a handshake. Sometimes just a handshake. A handshake from those guys was worth way more than a couple of bucks, anyway. It felt as though we were making progress, although I wasn't sure of what kind. For some reason, everyone liked the San Fransisco 49ers jackets, I still can't figure that one out. It seemed as far away as the moon.

One evening a friend of mine came to me excitedly. Told me about an opportunity the older guys wanted to give us. It was later that evening and might even involve guns. It was a Wednesday night. The Gravesend library was opened late on Wednesdays. Until 8. It was 7:12. I still remember. I went there instead of with my friends (who I never saw or heard of again). I sat and read the interesting facts in the back pages of some sort of atlas. I wondered if paint really bubbled off of cars in Arizona. I wondered if kids in Arizona were like us. I looked up how far away San Fransisco was and thought about the kids there. Without knowing them, I was envious of their lives. I went home and talked to my dad about getting me back into school.

Tales From Dank Ct. Vol. I

2011-06-04T13:38:00.001-07:00

My friends and I were probably 13-14 years old. We'd hang out all day playing in the street my parent's apartment building overlooked. We played the typical city games of the day--Stickball, Punchball, Boxball, Handball. A Spaulding ball was a cheap form of entertainment and cheap was barely within our price range. More often than not, we'd steal it from Melody Haven, the neighborhood newsstand/greeting card/candy store. The store was owned and ran by a disabled midget, a guy named Richard, I believe (as if he hadn't enough problems). We'd also steal candy and cigarettes from him; at first waiting patiently for him to go into the back, then finally, impatiently stealing what we wanted as he looked on and yelled after us. I still remember his twisted and hopeless face. His forlorn desperateness at being the only shopkeeper on Avenue X who was neither mob connected or physically able to run us down and beat the shit out of us. I'd like to say I feel bad, looking back now, and I do; but I'm also smiling rather broadly as I write this.

We were introduced to to the new guy in the neighborhood, John, around then. He must have been in his 30's and wore the typical uniform (jeans, wifebeater and thick gold chain with dangling Mother Mary pendant) of the day and area. He said he was Crystal's new dad, which didn't mean much, since she was only 9 years old and stayed inside most of the time. A fat pie-faced girl with somewhat of a stammer.

John took to coming home from work and showing off to us how far he could hit a ball. All the way down Dank Ct. to the Keyfood Supermarket on Avenue Z. I was the biggest kid and could sometimes come close, but I was awed by his little shows. A few of us noticed that he always had scratches on his arms, once or twice on his face and neck. With the lack of thought of kids that thought they owned the world (if not Dank Ct.) we finally asked him about the scratches. His eyes took on a daydream quality as he told us that he got them running through the tall grassed fields near Marine Park. It sounded weird to us and then he took the ball and fungo whacked it all the way to Keyfood again. Crystal's Mom soon became as reclusive as her fat, pie-faced, stammering daughter.

When I was 19, I called my friend from Dank Ct., I was sitting in my kitchen in Indiana, 800 miles and a lifetime away. I called back every year or so to get the Brooklyn dish. Keith's voice cracked on the phone when he told me, "Remember John?" I said I did. "His sentencing date is next month, he was fucking that fat Crystal kid, all along."

And I guess we kinda knew he wasn't running through tall-grassed fields near Marine Park. But he was a hell of a Stickball player. And the only thing better in those days was a crippled shopkeeper.

thought experiment

2011-06-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

i willingly surrender my cosmic compassion vegetarianism
for the manifest destiny of red meat american big balls—
of courage of bravery of john wayne swaggering through
slatted wood swinging saloon doors—i order a vodka

the barkeep seems confused (i suppose i forget where i am)
and my russian blood screams for familiarity for
my calloused hands digging in near frozen soil hopeful

for chance potato as my grandfather was when he dug siberian dirt
to feed his young siblings left by insane mother, american bound father
cold and sitting atop a wood stove wailing steamed and hungry breaths.

this is the suffering buddha speaks of but i only feel it well
when my thoughts stray less far from home not lotus position
not with my fat russian american thighs . . . (oy) kaballah?
a book is being sent to me with promises of jewish mysticism abounding
among its pages and i will recognize it all with my semetic blood

with my semetic blood hasidic, precisely--i stole a prayer shawl
from synagogue it's in my nightstand now unused but of such comfort
nonetheless. {i am semetic siberian and sexy as all hell!}
with my 2nd generation american strut i needed that back now . . .
so tired of facing life's trials fueled by soybeans, rice and non-action only.

my dead father came to me in a dream we were in india on a 3rd world
bus looking out at sadhus along the ganges chanting ohm and such,
(as was i at the time) and i looked to my father—saw his incredulous
grin and suddenly he was wearing a tallit over his head, tefillin wrapped
to his forehead, around his arm he davened—i felt at home. we smiled

that was years ago but i still remember vividly and now again
i return to my familial reality tunnel—blood is thicker than water
but water pours out of my ass as i howl in psychedelic pain trying
to digest bowls of beef stew for the first time in months, months of basmati

i feel now as though all religions played successfully to their ends
become the same golden rule loving-kindness nirvana heaven on earth
in short a correct end of religion is the end of religion and we can
just be . . . no dogma no fear of eternal damnation and we are all one . . .

and religions are rivers and all rivers lead unto the same ocean
but the onset of a journey is so very important we are one and
have all been here before but blood knows blood and starts
with an advantage--not the disadvantage of acquainting first
to unknown river with unknown course current rocks and language

there is a school of thought that socrates and buddha
were taught by the same wandering group of enlightened masters
and it is plausible, they are quite similar—the same, really
upon enlightenment but i believe i explain it better in saying:

when we gain sainthood, we see we are adrift in the same ocean
regardless of the tributary we floated down in and we see
only compassion and i speak again of the buddha i suppose

i have a soft spot for him and soft spots scare me so very much
so i think of rasputin the mad monk addressing the crowd that
awaits the queen's address . . . swinging his huge siberian cock
shaded as mine is and says “THIS IS WHAT IS RULING RUSSIA.”

and now i want a motherfucking hotdog and a cowboy hat
i want to bring down the last buffalo and tour as a trick shot
gunfighter and my strength is back and i ain't never been a-skeer'd
at worst i circle the wagons and lie half dead on my 2010 sofa
exquisite stomach track pain pain pain i howl like ginsberg

with weakness with fear with a daughter i left and fear calling
with a son crippled by the god of Job's hand his head lolls
his eyes cross he cannot sit upright and my daughter forgets me
just a little more every day tomorrow i will send her a plastic
strawberry shortcake doll and a book i hope she remembers me through

my stomach is a buddhist perhaps but my soul chants in discomfort
nam myoho renge kyo they are uniting in smiles and love and hope but
I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
leave me alone to my kasha and borscht meditations—enlightenment
is supposed to hurt to scare off those not yet ready for it.

i am a mystical being who only wants to live being mystical—hermetic
but all the caves and mountains are on or off ramps to and from the
freeway and i have this fear of driving, you see and have weak eyes
there are no saints 'round these parts the last ones we killed
before the ink dried on the treaties—sent them away to be americanized

and america is jesus (not the man but his religion) and he haunts me
threatens to send me visions of himself dying for our sins and also i am
haunted by buddha and lotus petals at first pleasant but then . . .
jesus asked why hast thou forsaken me? Buddha's son asked
the same question and i wait for a vision of Siddhartha holding his boy—

and i wonder that if i ever were to reach enlightenment if i might be the first.

compost

2011-06-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

what cruel self deprecating gods are we!
placing ourselves onto this earth, caging ourselves into this skin
to inescapably suffer and die and for what—

. . . is it for false ego's sake?
the hoax of an exercise at free will
an ill fated attempt at separation
a chance to howl at the moon
frolic in wild flowered fields?

is it for the thrill of flesh?
throbbing hard cock, cum-filled balls longing to
explode into open eager pussy and
ending finally, in lactating tits
. is it for this we trick ourselves . . .
the grasp at immortality of a blanketed cooing baby?

>i have been nurturing a compost pile out back,
it proves to me that there is no death—
simply the stench of life that we for some reason so yearn.

* * * * * * * *

[i am homesick often and regret this game]

and it is all a game—all a game to cure our boredom
of the all knowing humming oneness of our energy
universal truth we pull ourselves ‘free’ of . . .

{when I was a young child my father taught me
that most people want to be lied to
that almost no one wants to know the truth}

perhaps simply because all of our (un)reality depends
on us believing this ill conceived lie . . . this lie that
there is anything at all in the world but our own deity
and what we make from it for our own entertainment.

* * * * * * * *

is that all this is? (mindless entertainment of the lord our us)
A boardwalk freak show a nickelodeon a cosmic diversion—
. . . perhaps . . .
or is kindness our goal? what is lacking and needed within
the ultimate ground of being from which we pull these bodies of clay cages—

(love is too akin to hatred and
good deeds too often the springboard of monsters—
kindness is non-action and wants nothing for itself
and is needed back home to absorb all other ills . . .
as how your right hand wraps around your left forefinger.)

i light another cigarette,
stuff the filter of the last one into my overalls
scrye the compost heap and see myself rotting cosmically soon
. kindness—it’s my greatest challenge this time ‘round—
my 959th life [say two psychics a thousand miles and a decade apart]

. . . when i stand real quiet, i can hear the slithering worms
but then again, i always could—and i ain’t never been afraid

"who is the master that makes the grass green?"
. i am the master that makes the grass green.

Kap 2010

purple mongoose

2011-06-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

now on the day before my 35th birthday
i remember back to the day before my 10th
(being that these two years were
the only ones that i carried wishes to.)

* * * * * * * *

it was a warm day for February 24th brooklyn
i knew i was getting a bike—saw it there in our living room
draped by a well worn bed sheet . . . i couldn't wait another day.

my dad told me to go ahead—one day early but I couldn’t wait
(man, i could just see the purple mongoose—
its white plastic laid back seat
its white tires that would soon show perfect amounts of dirt)

[all I wanted was that purple mongoose]
. . . i pulled the sheet off of it . . .

it was a bright red ross piranha bike
with ridiculous cushions and colors not purple
wrapped around it's heavy heavy heavy frame

i knew we'd never fly, we two with our too sturdy frames,
not like my lucky friends and their money and their
made for the air purple mongoose machines.

(my dad knew i was let down
and i do believe he was proud of my excitement
toward a bike i didn't want)

on the ride downstairs alone in the elevator
just my ross and me i dreamed . . .
of us soaring off ramps wowing all those silly mongoose owners
with their slack jaws and scabbed knees.

it took me seconds to throw a half rotten door
over stacked plastic milk crates, throw my jacket to the ground
(to tempt fate with my not quite ten year old bare flesh)

i climbed atop the red monster (i'd already named it)
peddled peddled, faster faster toward the ramp
a mad breeze chilling my hairless face—

i slid almost 10 yards (and that's far on concrete)
. the red monster hit the end of the ramp
and nose dived—made no attempt for the blue yonder—
wild or otherwise, off we didn't go.

* * * * * * * *

and now, at one day shy of 35, i rub the scar on my elbow
on a wet pacific northwest february 24th
waiting in a room of healthcare providers who
poke and prod my henry. my henry
and he screams . . . but doesn’t move all that much.

{or sit or crawl or stand or roll over}

the day before my birthday again hoping
for a gift i knew i’d never receive—
[all i want is a diagnosis that is kind hopeful surmountable]

the doctor with soft familiar jewish eyes and healthy twins
waiting for him at home to run wildly healthfully into his open arms—
lets the words drop with no fanfare no pomp no circumstance

. . . cerebral palsy. all four limbs affected
this could point to further brain issues—low IQ. . .

and i walk outside vision tunneling gasping for air crying
i think of toddler wheel chairs distorted limbs and brain waves
i think of respite care hospital beds handrails

i think of never flying on a purple mongoose.
i think of my son never flying on a purple mongoose.

Kap 2010
One from my ever soon to be released second book, "Cornflower".

saint bernard

2011-06-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

it had been raining for days
sideways buckets saturating saturating saturating
a palpable pacific northwest fog of muted green
dulled senses and thermal clothing under faded jeans and wrinkled hickory shirt.

and a dog outside the back door as i typed. a saint bernard
standing in a ray of light, first light in days. a week, perhaps?
>but we don’t have a dog<

but there he was lackadaisically familiar with our rhododendron.
tufts of spongy undercoat coming out through chestnut topcoat.
ah, thoughts of spring. ah, dog of rescue
my mood had before then been so glum, savior dog!
with your signs of spring, with your heroic bloodlines.

>but we have no dog<
i went to look in the kitchen and saw no bowl of food.
went back to the door and opened it. saw him plain as day
but he didn’t acknowledge my eyes just lustfully sniffed at my rhodi.
not looking at me, not acknowledging me. perhaps i just imagined him?

i rushed back to the kitchen to wash breakfast’s bowls and spoons and mugs
thought perhaps i am not real and that the rhododendron is not either
or the patches of grass asking to be mowed, or the cedar tree tall and proud
or the white picket fence ever so in need of painting, or the rain, or the rain

and only god is real, god the ultimate ground of being and we are this god
all pieces of a bored creator tricked by himself to forget this only truth
so as to enjoy our little game we play, strewn upon time like dice at
a craps table.

and we are, in reality, a saint bernard in my false yard and the game
is all but over
i looked out the kitchen window, he was there then, sniffing grass,
ignoring my gaze.
moving in cosmically strange undulations, or simply wagging his tail

and I cursed at the dried on oatmeal. how hard it was to scrub away.

Kap 2010

scene from a cul de sac window

2011-06-01T21:47:00.000-07:00

there are no toys
in the ghetto
mom's money goes to
cheap cigarettes
and cheaper beer.

a tree turns into a swing
to pass another boring summer day

2 black kids
a boy and girl, each under 8
sway from its weary branches
effortlessly
naturally
joyously

a white boy
soon tries to join in.

he can't grasp the branches
finally
grimacing
he grabs hold

and falls
hard
lays in the shaded grass
for what seems a long time

the 2 blacks sway hang swing laugh

whitey gathers himself
dusts off his jeans
begins to shout at the blacks
ordering them

"swing to this one"
and
"grab that one"
pointing with a fragile finger.

and they listen
and the fun stops

sadly swinging from a tree
on a too hot summer day.

Kap 2009

signum crucis

2011-06-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

a recent dream of the lord jesus christ:
after copious amounts of food unsettling my stomach
after copious amounts of news upsetting my brain
(with a belly and a head both far too heavy to bear)

. . . he comes to me [or i to him?]
we are robed sandaled bearded praying, well—
he calls it davening . . . i call it meditating
he absconds me for chanting a mantra,

i say i am bored of the lord’s prayer,
and that it is absurd to pray to yourself.
he asks me what the lord’s prayer is—i tell him—
he scoffs and becomes visibly irritated

tells me that he knows what i mean
how the gnostics had it so so very right—
how the kingdom of god is within you
(but still—the mantra i chant touches a nerve)

{i defend it as a gift from a guru i love very much
given to me transmitted through him by another
i rarely ever felt so connected— such oneness
as we spoke under wool blankets in his unheated sanctuary

his big toe poked through his sock and i wanted to touch it
tangibly link our cosmic ultimate ground of being
toe to toe in timeless eternity where all is the now
and he said in all his years, never had he given this—
this the rarest and most mystical of mantra

and I felt as arthur did, freeing excalibur from that stone—
me . . . a true king receiving his call to greatness at last}
and my excitement unwinds in me telling jesus

that it's just his jewish soul being bothered by my mantra, he agrees.
>i say i stumbled the same way, (my poor jewish mother’s guilt).
then i ask how christians went so astray—[i’d been
meaning to ask this and had been pondering the perfect time]

. . . he says that it's only a guess—seeing as he was dead by then
but he mutters something in my vague direction
about dogma rotting the brains of the flock . . .
>and destroying wonder as effectively as science, i add—he nods

(not to mention all these people killing each other
all in the name of the very same false-god parable , we say together)

. . . and . . .
as he speaks he lifts dirt and lets it slip from between fingers
and seems so sad. not menacing like the christ that

pervades my sleeping and sometimes waking dreams.
{dripping in oil painted agony from grunewald’s brush}
i want to touch his almost bare foot with mine . . .
i do not—i imagine it would just make him all the more sad

as we turn to see a crowd forming around st. paul
his raised hand letting a diamond encrusted rolex
peek out from under the sleeve of his robe as he performs
signum crucis with great flair and to much praise.

Kap 2010